I showed my face at our local library today after 2 months and found I had a $17.00 fee. You see, back in April or May, I returned a CD without the little booklet. Apparently, that little booklet is more important than the actual CD because it has a barcode on it. And they just CAN’T put the CD back into circulation without the booklet and barcode. Supposedly the barcode makes the CD traceable. But judging by the repeated angry librarian phone calls I received over the last two months, I’m pretty sure the CD is traceable (to me, anyway) without the barcode.
I couldn’t find the blasted CD booklet anywhere. I searched. Believe me, I searched. Instead of calling them and explaining this, I maturely avoided the phone calls and contemplated changing my number, then getting my 2 year old a library card I could use. Unsure if that plan would work since I’ve become chummy with a few librarians who would recognize my face and might possibly thwart my attempt to scam the system, I decided to just not show up there again and instead start going to a different library.
But the other libraries are far away. I’m the type of person who always has to be reading, so I went through books I own and have read in the past. When nothing on my shelves interested me anymore, I began reading my prescription inserts. I don’t have many prescriptions so that didn’t last long.
Feeling lost and in utter despair because I have no book to read, I decided to clean out the car trunk. And there it was: the CD booklet. I sung Disney praises (because it was a Disney CD) and immediately took it down to the library, ecstatic but also full of shame.
I handed the silly booklet over to the librarian, sheepishly explaining that it was probably 2 months overdue. I handed her my library card and was informed of my monstrous fee.
I nicely asked for a reduction and she took off $7.00
So, after paying $10.00, my daughter and I got reacquainted with our beloved library. We read stories and signed up for the summer reading program. After every 3 hours of reading to my daughter, she gets a prize.
Now that we can show our face in the library again (and even check out books), she’s going to be raking in the prizes. Some day I will tell her how I sacrificed my pride so that she could enjoy cheap toys and crayons given to her for doing something we already do every day.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I would have done the exact same thing.
You can run, but you can’t hide! So glad you’re no longer a fugitive from justice! Read away and enjoy the library.!
you are soo funny! i’m glad it all worked out for the best in the end.
Huh, sounds almost like a Seinfeld episode. Good thing it wasn’t the same book Jerry and Goerge rented. That would have been even more embarassing.
We once lost the DVD for a movie (I think it was “So I Married an Axe Murderer”) and the library wanted to charge us like $20 for it. My husband offered to buy another copy and replace it (because you can find it for much less), but alas, they said no. Apparently they have to purchase the DVD and don’t know how to use eBay or Blockbuster’s pre-viewed movie section. We were NOT happy about it!
And on the fines? I look at it as my way of buying more books and donating them to our public library. We never return our books on time!
OK, that was hilarious. Don’t you just hate rules. They make us into liars and cheaters and cause us to act in ways we never would if it weren’t for those darn rules. What if you never found the booklet. They must have a plan B. That is rediculous. That’s why I don’t go to the library, I just spend tons of money buying my own books.
I have found it cheaper to just buy books then pay the fines… I am that bad. That and librarians scare me.
Ummm I am not going to even admit to my latest fee to you.
Whoa whoa whoa. WHOA.
You can ask for a fine reduction – and they DO it? That is MAGICAL! I had no idea! Of course, my fines are much much scarier than yours and I tend to avoid them for so long that they start attaching all sorts of crazy later-than-late fees to my bill so maybe ours is not exaclty the same situation.
That being said, be glad you lost the book and not the CD. One time we lost the CD part to an audio set and when I found it I went to return it they said they’d THROWN THE BOOK OUT! They told me I might as well just keep the CD and told me I was going to have to pay like $40 for a whole new replacement set.
To which I was like “Seriously? You’re a library and you threw a book away? I mean, I know it was missing the CD and all but did that render it garbage? You couldn’t hang on to it a bit longer, in hopes that I might find something so valuable and save us all some trouble? Are you guys hurting for shelf space that much?” and she just looked at me like I was a horrible person for the whole mess. So I walked away.
And now there’s a poster of me that hangs in the break room of each library, warning them not to issues cards or fine reductions or smiles to me in any shape or form.
The end.
But PS – Thanks for sharing this post because even though I’m ten times worse than you, I still felt a tiny bit better knowing I’m not the only one who’s well-meaningly lost library property and suffered the harsh consequences.